


Too Far from Home

by MrToddWilkins



Series: The Spaceflight Experience [3]
Category: For Better or For Worse (Comics), Medieval Land Fun-Time World (Video), Multi-Fandom, NASA RPF
Genre: 2002-2005, Canadian Thanksgiving, Cuddling & Snuggling, D&D, Epistolary, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Fluff, Humor as a coping mechanism, ISS Expedition 5, ISS Expedition 6, ISS Expedition 7, ISS Expeditions 8 through 11, Kistler Aerospace K-1, Kistler RPK-D, Kistler RRF, Letters, Naked Cuddling, Patterson Family Fluff, Political Humor, STS-107, STS-111, STS-112, STS-113, STS-114, Soyuz TMA-1, Soyuz TMA-2, Soyuz TMA-3 through Soyuz TMA-6, There will be a sequel, Thérèse is Anthony’s stepsister, Vodka, Whizzer Brown Lives, also he isn’t gay, alternate Star Wars continuity, as for Columbia itself it is remotely deorbited and lands at Vandenberg AFB, le foobiverse, obvs the events of canon!Falsettos never happened, ooc:Anakin and Darth Vader are two different guys, piano playing, the origins of muggle quidditch, there will be a Columbia rescue mission but Shuttle flights still get delayed, watching Chamber of Secrets in the theater
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-09-26 15:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrToddWilkins/pseuds/MrToddWilkins
Summary: Three astronauts on the ultimate adventure. What could go wrong?Also,drama back on Earth. Quite a bit of it.Welcome to 2003,folks.





	1. Neutral Buoyancy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [all the FBorFW fans who wanted to see Thérèse’s good side](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=all+the+FBorFW+fans+who+wanted+to+see+Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se%E2%80%99s+good+side).

April 17,2002

From birth,we’re conditioned to accept gravitational limitation as a fact of life. If you drop a drinking glass,does it not shatter into hundreds of glassy pieces? If you slip on ice,do you not fall? If you jump,the closest many of us will ever come to flying,does not gravity bring you down again?

But for some of us,those limitations mean little. 250 miles above Earth,circling in a perpetual orbit of an hour and a half,there is the International Space Station. At the time our story begins,it is playing host to Expedition 4,its latest crew,consisting of two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut. When it is complete,hopefully around 2009,it will be able to accommodate six lucky astronauts from the various countries which built it,launched it,or paid for it in some way. Also there are the seven astronauts of STS-110,just wrapping up their mission to deliver the keystone of the station’s backbone,a section of truss known as S-0. With more than 475,000 parts, S-0 measures 44.2 feet long, 14 feet wide and weighs 26,716 pounds. NASA refers to it as a ‘marvel of complexity’.

Down below them,in a facility in Houston,two men stand beside a pool. The tall one with the sorta-kinda crew cut is Tom Marshburn,soon to be Science Officer on the space station. Next to him,with the olive skin and the ‘young Dan Quayle’ look,is Owen Valentine,the soon-to-be commander of Expedition 6. This is the second flight for Valentine,the first for Marshburn.

———

‘Alright,gents,up you go’. The voice of the suit technician pulled Valentine out of his reverie.

”God,I hate Mondays”,said Marshburn as he attached comm leads to his Snoopy cap.

”So do I,Tom. But we gotta take this like men,or the boys up in Washington won’t let us fly their precious shuttles. Capisce?”

Marshburn nodded,and the two stepped onto the raised platform. They secured themselves in hanging frames and hooked leather loops to their arms. Then Owen gave a thumbs up,and a technician pressed a switch. A crane lifted the platform and then lowered it into the water.

———

“OK,guys”,came the voice of the Capcom in the next room. “Last week you worked on the attachment of ESP-2 to the S-1 truss for temporary storage. Today we want you to focus on extraction of the CMG and transferring it to the Z1 truss. Tomorrow,in Building 9,we’ll focus on spinning it up.”

Valentine smiled and waved at a nearby camera. Also nearby was a team of divers ready to support them as needed. Marshburn swam over to one end of the gyro and Valentine to the other. 

Predictably,a latch chose that moment to stick. _Our glitch of the day,_Marshburn thought as Valentine communicated the problem to Capcom.

”Stand by one,guys. We’ll take a look.”

That look took only a few minutes. It turned out that Valentine had rotated that latch clockwise instead of counterclockwise the last time they’d been down here. After that,the simulated CMG transfer went without a hitch. What they’d just simulated was planned for a pair of EVAs on the mission that would serve as their ride home,STS-114.

————

After work,the two adjourned to the Hofbraugarten,a nearby German restaurant and beer garden. Having been around since the Apollo era,the place had an excellent multigenerational band,a free unlimited bar,a video arcade,and even an archery range.

Marshburn was in the men’s room,pants around his thighs,when he heard voices.

”.....sure,but Caine’s got the better assignment.”

”How’d she even get in anyway?”

”Her stepbrother’s the guy who heads Range Safety at KSC. Connections.”

”She’s the best arm operator I’ve ever seen”,said the first voice. “I wanted her with me on 111,but you know how it goes. She’s even writing a book.....”

Marshburn washed his hands and went back to his table,a bemused look on his face. Clearly they had been talking about Thérèse Caine,one of the newest astronaut group,but why praise her? Usually,if you were talking in the bathroom,the gossip was bound to be negative. Positive bathroom gossip was practically unheard of. And she was already assigned as Mission Specialist 2 on STS-107,due to fly at the end of the year.

Marshburn shrugged as he got back to his meal. He’d hear all about it in due time.


	2. The history of the X-38

From October 1991 to December 1996, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility (which became the Dryden Flight Research Center in 1985), Edwards, CA, conducted a research program known as the Spacecraft Autoland Project to determine the feasibility of the autonomous recovery of a spacecraft using a ram-air parafoil system for the final stages of flight, including a precision landing. The NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the U.S. Army also participated in various phases of the program, with the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory developing the software for Wedge 3 under contract to the Army. Four generic spacecraft models (each called a Spacewedge or simply a Wedge) were built to test the feasibility of the concept and also of the use of a parafoil for delivering Army cargo. Technology developed during the program had also had application to the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle demonstrator. Spacewedge demonstrated precision flare and landing into the wind at a predetermined location. The program showed that a flexible, deployable system using autonomous navigation and landing was a viable and practical way to recover spacecraft.

NASA researchers conducted a flight test program in California to develop and refine the Spacewedge vehicle design. The first test vehicle (Wedge 1) was just 1.3 m long, and weighed 55 kg. It was initially launched from a hillside near Tehachapi to evaluate general flying qualities, including gentle turns and landing flare. Two of these slope soar flights were made on 23 April 1992 with approximately 30 kph winds, achieving altitudes of three to 15 m above the ground. The test program then moved to Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards AFB, and to a sport parachute (Skydive) drop zone at California City, CA.

A second vehicle (known as Inert Spacewedge or Wedge 2) was fabricated with the same external geometry and weight as Wedge 1. It was initially used to validate parachute deployment, harness design, and drop separation characteristics. Wedge 2 was inexpensive, without internal components, and considered expendable. It was first dropped from a Cessna U-206 Stationair on 10 June 1992 during Flight 3. A second drop of Wedge 2 verified repeatability of the parachute deployment system. The Wedge 2 vehicle was also used for the first drop from a Rans S-12 ultralight modified as a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV) during flight 9 on 14 August 1992. Wedge 2 was later instrumented and used for ground tests, mounted on top of a van, and became the primary test vehicle for the Phase II test series.

A total of 36 flight tests were made during Phase I, the last taking place on February 12, 1993. These flights verified the manual control and autonomous landing systems of the vehicle. Eleven of the tests were remotely controlled. Most were launched from the Cessna U-206 Stationair. Only flights 9 and 12 were launched from the Rans S-12 RPV.

Phase II of the program ran from March 1993 to March 1995, and encompassed 45 flights. It continued the research for NASA JSC, using a smaller, 77 A2 parafoil for higher wing (parachute) loading (0.10 kg/m2). For Phase II, NASA Dryden engineers developed a new guidance, control, and instrumentation system.

Phase III, encompassing 34 flights, evaluated the Precision Guided Airdrop Software (PGAS) system using Wedge 3 from 14 June 1995 to 20 November 1996. Researchers used Wedge 3 to develop a guidance system to be used by the Army for precision offset cargo delivery. The Wedge 3 vehicle was 1.3 m long, and was dropped at weights varying from 57 to 86 kg. Unlike Wedges 1 and 2, its flight objectives were not tied to the terminal recovery of a space vehicle, and it was not called a Spacewedge. (There was also a fourth wedge, but it never flew and served only as backup hardware to Wedge 3.)

The Spacewedge was a flattened biconic airframe joined to a ram-air parafoil with a custom harness. In the manual control mode, the vehicle was flown using radio uplink. In the autonomous mode, it was controlled using a small computer which received inputs from onboard sensors. Selected sensor data were recorded onto several onboard data loggers.

Two Spacewedge shapes, resembling half-cones with a flattened bottom, were used for four airframes that represented generic hypersonic vehicle configurations. Wedge 1 and Wedge 2 had sloping sides, and the underside of the nose sloped up slightly. Wedge 3 and Wedge 4 had flattened sides, to create a larger internal volume for instrumentation. The Spacewedge vehicles were 1.22 m long, 0.76 m wide, and 0.53 m high. The basic weight was 55 kg. Wedge 1 had a tubular steel structure, covered with plywood on the rear and underside to withstand hard landings. It had a fiberglass-covered wooden nose, and removable aluminum upper and side skins. Wedge 2, originally uninstrumented, was later configured with instrumentation. It had a fiberglass outer shell, with plywood internal bulkheads and bottom structure. Wedge 3 was constructed as a two-piece fiberglass shell, with a plywood and aluminum shelf for instrumentation.

A commercially-available 27 m2 ram-air parafoil was selected for Phase I tests. Such parachutes were commonly used by sport parachutists. The docile flight characteristics, low loading factor, and proven design allowed the project team to concentrate on developing the vehicle rather than the parachute. With the exception of lengthened control lines, the parachute was not modified. Its large size allowed the vehicle to land without flaring, and without sustaining damage. For Phase II and III, a smaller (7 m2) parafoil was used to allow for a wing (actually, parafoil) loading more representative of space vehicle or Army cargo applications.

The Spacewedge Phase I and II instrumentation system architecture was driven by cost, hardware availability, and program evolution. (During Phase I, Wedge 2 had an inert payload but was outfitted with instrumentation for Phase II.) The essential items consisted of the uplink receiver, Global Positioning System receiver and antenna, barometric altimeter, flight control computer, servoactuators, electronic compass, and ultrasonic altimeter. Added instrumentation included a video camera and camcorder, control position transducers, a data logger, and a pocket personal computer. NASA employees integrated these off-the-shelf components. Wedge 3 instrumentation was considerably more complex to accommodate the PGAS software system.

Spacewedge control systems had programming, manual, and autonomous flight modes. The programming mode was used to start up and configure the flight control computer. Researchers entered the landing coordinates, decision altitudes, and ground wind velocity at the landing site.

The manual mode used a radio control (RC) model receiver and uplink transmitter, configured to allow the ground pilot to enter either brake (pitch) or turn (yaw) commands. The vehicle reverted to manual mode whenever the transmitter controls were moved, even when the autonomous mode was selected.

The autonomous mode allowed the vehicle to navigate to the landing point, maintain the holding pattern while descending, enter the landing pattern, and initiate the flare maneuver. There were three decision altitudes: at the start of the landing pattern, at the turn to final approach, and upon flare initiation.

When at high altitude and offset from the landing point, the vehicle was commanded to fly to the landing point. If the landing point was reached while at or above the first decision altitude (typically set to 100 m), then the vehicle was commanded to fly a holding pattern until it descended below the decision altitude. The holding pattern was an upwind racetrack aligned with the wind (as input in the programming mode). Each lap of the racetrack pattern consumed approximately 150 m of altitude. Below the first decision altitude, the vehicle was commanded to enter the landing pattern.

The point to turn to final approach was based on a second decision altitude, typically 45 m to 60 m. This second altitude was a function of the wind and the position relative to the landing point. Once on final approach, the vehicle was commanded to maximum speed, steering commands were locked out, and the ultrasonic altitude sensor was activated.

At a final decision altitude of about 8 m, the flare was initiated by commanding full brake. Touchdown occurred approximately 4 seconds later.

Many Dryden employees and partners worked on this project. These included R. Dale Reed, who originated the concept of conducting a subscale flight test at Dryden. He also participated in the flight testing. Alexander Sim managed the project and participated in the flight tests and documentation. James Murray served as the principal Dryden investigator and as lead person for all systems integration for Phases I and II. He designed and fabricated much of the instrumentation for Phase II and was the lead person for flight data retrieval and analysis in Phases II and III. David Neufeld performed the wedge systems mechanical integration for all three phases and served as parachute rigger, among other duties. From Draper Lab, Philip Hattis served as the Project Technical Director for his organization's significant contributions to Phase III. For the Army, Richard Benney was the technical point of contact, while Rob Meyerson served as the technical point of contact for the NASA JSC and provided the specifications for the Spacewedges.

Potential NASA users for a deployable, precision, autonomous landing system include proposed vehicles with human crews as well as planetary probes and booster recovery systems. Military applications include the use of autonomous gliding parachute systems on aircraft ejection seats, and high-altitude, offset delivery of cargo to minimize danger to aircraft and crews. Such a cargo delivery system could also be used for providing humanitarian aid.

The Spacecraft Autoland Project, or Spacewedge, was an example of the innovative engineering work that was typical at NASA Dryden. Off-the-shelf equipment was used whenever possible in the project to keep costs low and to reduce development time. A relatively inexpensive Rans S-12 ultralight aircraft was modified as a RPV drop aircraft until the less labor-intensive unmodified Cessna U-206 had proved its viability. The four Spacewedge research vehicles were placed in storage at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you’re wondering WTF this was,a capsule history of a spaceplane that will play a role in the story.


	3. Introducing Thérèse

June 4,2002

“The NASA Space Shuttle has spent its whole career chasing elusive space stations. It was by itself the original sinner, since it had killed the space station it was to go to in the very first place.

In 1970, after losing nuclear shuttles to the Moon and Mars NASA pinned all hopes into a balanced package - the winged shuttle would fly to a space station. Even that package, however, was impossible to fund, and soon a choice had to be made - station or shuttle ? The reasoning at the time was that the shuttle would be the truck to build the station, so the truck had to come first, and the station was pushed back for a decade. The soviets, for their part, picked up the opposite path - station first, shuttle... someday. In the end, Buran would only fly once.

Because it had no destinations to go to - not the Moon, not Mars, not even a space station - the shuttle had to seek an interim job to fill its first decade of existence. It ultimately earned a life launching satellites, all of them - military, science, and commercial satellites. By a bizarre twist of fate, a federal agency like NASA found itself competing with private companies, notably Arianespace.

In 1973 the shuttle was given all American satellites on a silver plate but the price to pay was that it was to earn money, and to achieve that it had to fly no less than 60 times a year - once a week ! Unfortunately, experience would prove the vehicle could fly at best 8 times a year (in 1996). Early in the 80s NASA only partially acknowledged that reality by cutting the shuttle "ideal" flight rate to 24 a year, still three times more than what the shuttle could endure. From 1984 onwards the space agency had its back against a wall - 24 flights a year or lose face against Congress and the world.

In 1985 the shuttle flew 10 times with two more flights cancelled. Still half the nominal target, yet the agency was already on its heels, scrapping everything it had for money and personnel.

In 1986 it was to fly 16 times, but as of mid-January repeated delays with the last 1985 flight had already ruined the schedule. Not only was the flight schedule grueling, it was also constrained by fixed planetary launch windows - the Halley comet and planet Jupiter would not suffer any delay. The robotic probes would not wait !

Since December, Shuttle flights had been pretty nightmarish. Columbia's early December mission had lifted off in early January; and from then, things got worse. Delays on January 22; technical glitches on January 24,26,and 27; and, last but not least, bad weather forecast all plotted to ruin the schedule. Enough was enough, for the aforementioned reasons the shuttle had to fly. After a handful of stormy, controversial video conferences in the evening of January 27 the decision was made to launch on a day that had not only the coldest temperatures on the ground, but also very brutal jet streams at 30 000 ft.

That Tuesday, January 28 1986 the weather was definitively discouraging. Yet for the sake of impossible flight rates determining NASA credibility and unforgiving planetary launch windows, Space Shuttle Challenger was bound to go through these disastrous weather conditions.

It did not make it.

The night before the launch icy temperatures froze a join on a booster, the jet stream shook the frozen join; a tongue of flame then leaked from the damaged booster onto the external tank, piercing it. The tank violently disintegrated ... and the crewed orbiter above it was blown to pieces. The crew cabin retained a relative integrity but crashed into the ocean, killing all seven crew members including a school teacher that was to give a lesson from space. A major public relation hit for NASA now had very horribly and tragically backfired. Under Presidential inquiry the shuttle fleet was grounded for two and half years.

Meanwhile the space station case was no better. The shuttle kept missing rendezvous with possible orbital outposts. Skylab could not wait for the shuttle to overcome its delays, and burned into the atmosphere in 1979. Afghanistan, Poland and the Reagan election ensured no shuttle ever docked to a Soviet Salyut operated between 1978 and 1985. Salyut was improved into Mir and that time the shuttle was present to the rendezvous.

After 1995 and for three years the shuttle met the now Russian space station. It was a wonderful piece of international cooperation. However, what was still missing, was some big American space station, a return of the project postponed by a decade to build the shuttle.

In 1984 Reagan did just that, giving NASA $8 billion to build the station of their dreams. What no one foresaw at the time was that it would be fourteen years before the first module was launched, and that module was a Russian one, of Mir heritage !

At the turn of the century NASA at least was building its (international) space station; the shuttle had returned to its original job as imagined in 1969. It had taken the best part of three decades to reach that nirvana. The shuttle credibility, however, had been definitively ruined by the disastrous satellite business leading to the Challenger disaster.

As the shuttle missed a space station badly, and because that satellite job was not truly satisfying, early in the 70s an inexpensive ersatz space station had been imagined. Europe's Spacelab and the American Spacehab were space station without wings. They would fly into orbit within the shuttle payload bay but, in order to save money they would draw their life from the shuttle itself, meaning they could not be released to live a space station’s life. Instead they would be stuck aboard the shuttle and get down with it at the end of the mission. Bluntly, Spacelab flew for brief 15 days missions instead of Mir's continuous 15 years. The ISS, of course, would change that; but it had been delayed again and again.

Circa 1997 and waiting for the ISS, Congress encouraged NASA flying Spacehab in a couple of missions. The space agency, however, did not give a rat: energy and money instead flowed into the ISS. The mission was delayed by two full years and ultimately fell on the oldest of the shuttle fleet, veteran Columbia. It had once been the member of a troika that included the Challenger and mostly forgotten Enterprise. The last two, unlike Columbia, were mock-ups; and one of the two mock-ups was to be turned into a fully fledged shuttle to fly along Columbia itself. Early on the honour belonged to Enterprise; but Challenger was found to be easier to modify, and Enterprise never flew into orbit. With Challenger destroyed and Enterprise stuck in a museum old Columbia found itself isolated; it become a relic the other three shuttles - Discovery, Atlantis and Challenger successor Endeavour - might have looked on with disdain.

Columbia was considered a relic in the sense that, built ten years before Discovery its structure was somewhat heavier and its payload was lower. It happened the ISS was in a Russian-friendly orbit, and that orbit induced severe penalties for all shuttles - but Columbia higher mass made the penalties even more cumbersome.

In 1996 NASA decided old Columbia would not build the ISS; it instead has entered into a semi-retirement, doing every single non-ISS missions, although there are not many of them. As a result Columbia is intimate with the Hubble space telescope... and Spacehab.

How’d I do,big brother?”,Thérése Caine asked to conclude her monologue.

Her stepbrother,Anthony,looked up from his laptop. “Pretty good,sis. You might need to tighten up the text a bit. But the general gist of the introduction is there.”

Thérèse smiled at her brother from across the office they shared whenever she was at the Cape. The office was done in the natural style that had been popular when they were kids. The windows were large and looked on a broad swath of the KSC industrial area.

Thérèse herself was an attractive young lady. Her oval face was framed by hazel-colored curls,and dominated by warm brown eyes. She was tall and graceful,with expensively manicured hands and pedicured feet. She was one of the more cultured astronauts,being able to play a lot of classical music on the upright piano she kept in the foyer of her League City house. She was also as outgoing as they came,having friends amongst the politicos who supervised NASA’s coffers. Some people joked that she was the reason NASA’s budget had started increasing lately. Another defining trait of hers was her ambition:some said that she aspired to be the first woman on the Moon.

Anthony himself was a fairly average man for his age. He was a tall guy with sandy hair,blue eyes protected by glasses,and the first wisps of a mustache. Like his stepsister,he was cultured,although not as ambitious as she was. He ran the Range Safety Office at KSC. As fewer and fewer modern rockets required Range Safety intervention these days,he felt that his job was a sinecure. He lived in a townhouse in Cocoa Beach,and when he wasn’t on duty,he liked to beachcomb. Recently,he had started dating (via e-mail) a childhood friend of his named Liz. He hoped to get her to come to the Cape someday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Word about Thérèse
> 
> Thérèse (Arsenault) Caine is,in my opinion,one of the better minor characters in FBorFW. The cultured,talented,and ambitious first wife of character Anthony Caine,she comes across in the comic strip as a villainous character:a cold,humorless shrew of a woman who feels threatened by Elizabeth,Anthony’s other love interest,and whom he eventually marries at the end of the strip’s run. 
> 
> But the prevailing opinion among the strip’s small fandom,even back to the days when she was kind of a major player in the strip,tends more towards her being a victim as opposed to a villain. It’s made abundantly clear,even when Anthony is married to her,that his cap is set on Elizabeth. Anthony seems to be the sort of guy who would rather his girl stay in the kitchen,rather than pursue any ambitions of her own. This is much how Elizabeth’s mother Elly has turned out. And consider that Anthony had to almost guilt Thérèse into having their child,a girl named Françoise.
> 
> In this story,things are obviously quite different. Anthony and Thérèse are stepbrother and stepsister instead of husband and wife. When they were about 6 years old,their respective father and mother died,and their remaining parents married when they were 8. They are closer here than in canon. As to who Francie’s father is,that’s something I will save for later. Suffice it to say there isn’t any Cainecest going on.


	4. An American Endeavour

June 5,2002

_He called her Elizabeth,not Liz or Lizardbreath. He was always Anthony, never Tony. The littlest of things were annoying her or Elly_ _. Like the sofa. It was beige. It was his mother’s,from the days when she was growing up,in that Philadelphia apartment she had never liked......_

The duties of Assistant Director of Range Safety had never been clearly defined. Nominally,you sat beside the SRO in Launch Control and prayed that everything went right. These days,it usually did,so Anthony thought of it as a sinecure job. The golden days of range safety had been in the early 60s,when one out of every thirty launches was a failure. Now the number was 1 in every 700,according to the IAC.

At 11 am,Anthony knocked on seven doors to awake the crew of STS-111. Six of them were already fully awake and in various states of preparation. The seventh,a Brit named O’Connor who would supervise the robot arm,was half-asleep in his bed when Anthony came in. That was little to worry about:O’Connor had flown on a mission to Mir in ‘97 and was always a little ‘off’,but his RMS skills were almost unmatched.

At breakfast,everyone had sausage patties and fruits,a departure from the traditional prelaunch meal of steak and eggs.


	5. Appendix:early development of the Kistler K-1

The Kistler Aerospace development schedule consisted of three phases. Each phase included the completion of specific financing goals and the achievement of planned technology milestones. Kistler was well into Phase II before experiencing funding problems.

Phase I: Preliminary Design - 1994-1997

By the end of 1995, Kistler Aerospace had completed Phase I of its development plan including the following activities.

Hired key members of the K-1 technical team. Completed the K-1 preliminary baseline design in June 1997. Raised additional capital from private sources. Engaged in negotiations with potential investors, including potential strategic partners, and potential contractors. Completed an assessment of the global satellite launch market and created a strategic plan for the K-1's entry into the global satellite launch business. Completed a series of presentations to K-1 customer prospects in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Phase II: Development and Testing - 1998-2002

Completed the K-1 vehicle development and ground facilities work packages and signed preliminary contracts with several major systems and sub-systems contractors. Completed a series of critical design reviews with K-1 contractors. Raised additional private financing. Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the State of Nevada to establish a United States launch site. Received 46 Russian NK-33 and NK-43 engines from Aerojet. Obtained a Right of First Refusal for all remaining Russian NK-33 and NK-43 engines.

Space Systems/Loral awarded a contract for ten launches with a value in excess of $100 million.

Executed contracts with major team members:

  * Lockheed Martin: Tanks and Vehicle Assembly
  * GenCorp Aerojet: Propulsion Systems
  * Northrop Grumman: Vehicle Structure
  * Draper Laboratory: Guidance: Navigation and Control and Mission Control System
  * AlliedSignal Aerospace: Vehicle Management System
  * Irvin Aerospace: Landing System
  * Oceaneering Thermal Systems: Thermal Protection System
  * Reynolds, Smith, and Hills/Leighton Contractors: Launch Facility

Initiated the process of obtaining Federal Aviation Approval (FAA) licensing to operate vehicles. Signed a final agreement with the NTS Development Corporation which granted Kistler the right to occupy and operate from area 18 at the Nevada Test Site. Signed an Operations Agreement with the Australian government which authorized Kistler to develop a spaceport, allowed plans for licensing, and set the terms for launches. Completed the design and engineering of the K-1 launch facility. Held ground breaking for launch facility in Woomera, Australia. Completed design, fabrication, and proof test of the OV and LAP Liquid Oxygen tanks. Started fabrication of structure, feed lines, and landing parachutes and airbags. Completed Thermal Protection System sizing and began detailed design. Purchased and tested electronic system components. Completed Flight Manager software and began system testing. Began integrated tests of the electronics system in the Hardware-in-the-Loop test facility at Draper Laboratory. Began testing of major components, including main engines, Orbital Maneuvering System engine, main parachutes and airbags. Began assembly of the LAP stage.

As funding becomes available, Kistler planned to complete Phase II. This would involve completing the detailed design, fabrication, assembly, integration, and ground testing of the K-1 aerospace vehicles. The flight test program was designed to demonstrate the capabilities and performance of K-1 vehicles, including guidance and control systems, ground and flight hardware, ground and flight operations procedures, thermal protection systems, and parachute and airbag landing systems.

Phase III: Preparations- 2003-2005


End file.
